AndhyaYug -- a travel to the age of Holocaust

Travel

by Tandrima Chattopadhyay

10 Feb 2018

Andhyayug

The recent news of the
Polish Law regarding the “Death Camps” of Holocaust – the Polish Government
wants to make the use of the term “Polish Death Camps” a criminal offence while
they prefer to term those as “Nazi Extermination camp in pre-occupied Poland”---
has raised points of controversy, mainly on the issue of the ‘freedom of
speech’ and about further historical research about the atrocity of Holocaust.
I have no personal opinion about this news, even if I have, I am not going to
bother my readers with that. This news struck me much as it reminded me of the
drama Andhyayug. I watched it a few days back and since then some
of the scenes often come to me in my pensive moments to awake me, to sadden me,
to question me, to provoke me to write down my feelings. Why would my readers
read again the bleak history of Holocaust! I thought. But that news probably
gave me a jerk. History is always relevant and there lies the value of the
drama ---AndhyaYug,
the age of Holocaust, a drama directed by Manish Mitra, presented by Kasba
Arghya.

Mechanised movement of a
group of labourers, uniformly dressed; ropes are tied at their wrists, waists
and legs and a symbol of Swastika at the backdrop makes the very first scene of
the drama a meaningful preface to the heinous novel of Holocaust.

A jovial Jewish athlete,
an aspiring Olympian became the prey of anti-Semitism. His career, health, love
and finally his life were butchered, and he became a symbol of the thousands
like him who suffered the terror at Auschwitz Extermination Camp. (To know
about the fate of Jew Olympians Agnes
Grunwald-Spier ‘s “Who Betrayed the Jew?” (2016) is a relevant text)

Raju Bera

Raju Bera
as a Jew athlete performed extremely well. The drama dealt with the issue of the
persecution of homosexuals by the Nazis and the pain and helplessness of a
human being at the death of his homosexual partner / friend became vivid and
touchy in the artistic expressions of Raju.

Tapas Chatterjee,
a veteran actor of Kasba Arghya whom I know personally as a very down-to-earth,
humble, genuine human being--- became totally unknown and ferocious as Dr
Mengele. Mengele used
Auschwitz as an opportunity to continue his anthropological studies and
research on heredity, using inmates for human experimentation.

Tapas Chatterjee

As a medical officer he
enjoyed dissecting living human bodies, especially innocent children who called
him lovingly ‘Mengele Uncle’, for his experiments. My son (a student of class
6) mistakenly took him to be Hitler as to him the ultimate symbol of all un-animal
-like atrocity is Hitler.

Director Manish Mitra
is a master of stage craft. A vibrant stage with meaningful colour, music and
symbol is his forte. When we see a Nazi party in Saffron and they say, “Our
colour changes with the change of our country: in India we are saffron, in
Pakistan we are green- cladded and like that we change our colour but we remain
same in our ethos” --- explanation is no more needed here. The director often
mixes and matches present with past, local with international to highlight the
human predicament under the rule of an autocrat.

Dheeman Bhattacharya,
a professor of Comparative Literature and a tremendously talented actor, is a
prized possession of this play. His role as Rudolf Höss will
surely leave the audience with lot of questions and millions of explanations. Höss
experimented with various gassing methods. According to Eichmann's 1961 trial
testimony, Höss told him that he used cotton filters soaked in sulfuric acid in
early killings. Höss later introduced hydrogen cyanide (prussic acid), produced
from the pesticide Zyklon B, to the killing process, for an accelerated
killing.

Dheeman Bhattacharya

Eccentricity and arrogance of Höss became alive through Dheeman and
some of the scenes – intimate posture with a straw-made woman – reminded me of
the movie, ‘Psycho’ and I took him (Höss) remarkably as one the “Hollow Men” of
T.S.Eliot , ‘Hollow Men’ of “This is the dead land
/This is cactus land” finally died with whimpers in reality.

I
know I am writing a very depressing article probably, but there is hope. There
is Janusz Korczak, a Pediatrician, who knew that death was
inevitable for the children of his orphanage and was wise enough to take refuge
to Rabindranath for the moral strength of his loved ones. Korczak decided that the children in the orphanage should put on Rabindranath Tagore’s play, The Post Office. Korczak’s selfless dedication was presented through the narratives of
Tapas.

Artistic vibrancy of Raju

I think I am unveiling too much of the story of
this play. Actually, I am preparing my ground to tell you about the cream
scene and the out-standing actor of this drama. Amid this
torture, killing and atrocity how did a mother react? She had little food for
her children, she knew they will be killed. Then? What did she do? The most
experienced actor of the group, respected Sima Ghosh, gave all the
answers quietly but strikingly. Tagore was her resort and she suddenly took
this play to a level where time and revenge remained a silent audience with
remorse and regret.

Sima Ghosh

All the actors played their part perfectly and
intelligently, but Simadi did not enact her role, she just presented herself as
a genuine mother with her heart and won the heart of the audience who won their
tears with her way of transience --- a path which Tagore taught in his play The
Post Office (Dakghar). I could not take better pictures of those
scenes as my moist eye-lids betrayed me.

Transience

Candle light march has become meaningless to me
nowadays but when the director lit a candle on the stage after explaining his
personal experience of a night at Auschwitz, I felt the positive vibrancy, I
knew life-force will always win.

The most enjoyable part of any production of Kasba
Arghya is the way they communicate with the audience, it is personal yet
professional, intense yet casual. Their dedication to each of their production,
the amount of research work they do keep them unique as a Theatre Group.

Kasba Arghya with their director Manish Mitra

I have said something, may be very incoherent,
emotion blurs logicality. I call you, my readers to a new travel experience ,
please be there in their next show and try to feel what I have missed.